Abstract It has been shown, in a previous paper, that intrinsic stacking faults are present in a non-stoichiometric carbide (TaC0,75). In the present paper, a study of the detailed orientation of partial dislocations reveals that stacking faults are bounded by Shockley dislocations. The authors conclude that the observed faults are due to a shear. The presence of widely dissociated nodes suggests that the stacking fault energy is low in this composition range.